Okay, I finally saw the last episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The last episode ever, I think – it’s been canceled. Stop pouting, it was a double-tap to the head mercy killing.

Although. Given my previous post about the program, you might be surprised to hear that I’m a little sad the show isn’t being renewed. I think it evolved in an interesting way at the end (quickly evolved, the last three episodes of season two seemed rushed). Were the writers itching for a reboot of the series, maybe to try and save the show?

They hinted at a big change in John Connor’s situation and hopefully season three would be the one where he’d man up. I mean, losing that emo haircut was a good start, but I kept expecting him to start hitting robots with his purse.

I’m a little sad about the show being canceled, because the possibilities that they hinted at. In terms of having intel and being in a superior position, John knows both the past and the future of the people he’s going to be fighting with. Nice. They’ve also upgraded his “protector” to the newer, polymimetic [note to self, add that to spellchecker] liquid metal alloy model – I can only imagine the danger would increase accordingly (and the show budget).

I wonder if the third season would bounce between the two time periods a little more so we could see John’s story as well as his mother’s (the show is hers, after all). It would be interesting (until they figure out a way to communicate) and I really liked the fact that Cameron was defective and the constant conflict between Cameron and Mom/Derek. Giving her an incredible amount of power and putting her on the fritz was a good combination. Reminds me of my cell phone.

I hate the on-again-off-again romance of Chuck. When characters on the screen are so oblivious to what the audience (when I say “audience”, I mean “me”) feels is “right”, it really frustrates me. But this isn’t about Chuck (which I’ve heard was renewed – I did a happy dance).

This is more a rant about how oblivious every character is in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I haven’t seen every episode of the second season, but so far we have John in a relationship with someone that’s obviously wrong (he should know better) and his Uncle Derek in a relationship that’s obviously wrong (he should know better). Sarah is unable to shoot anyone unless they’re 100% evil and clearly a threat (it comes back to bite her leather-clad ass). The FBI guy that knows about the impending robot attack is teaching an AI how to be more human (he should know better). Etc.

Mostly I’m mad that John Connor, savior of the human race, is such a whiny little kid. His mother raised him from birth to be a bad ass, to ignore personal motivation, to risk nothing (especially himself), and to fight. Yet John still acts like one of the characters from 90210.

Seriously, grow a pair and do what needs to be done.

Lost had another recap this week, which fills me with rage – it’s a punishment for people that watch the show regularly. The networks need to figure out how to have involved story lines. Right now it’s hard for a new viewer to start watching a show, since there’s so much “previously on” history that needs to be watched (which is different from “backstory”, which isn’t required viewing to understand the current episode).

I was watching the pilot for a cop show last week (got the DVD from the library). The main cop was a grizzled veteran, his rookie partner had been killed in the line of duty and this was his last day on the force. He had a new rookie to break in, a 23 year-old kid that was eager to prove himself. The first day they’re together they have a high speed chase to catch some liquor store robbers and have to save an infant that almost suffocates on a plastic dry cleaner bag (it was touching – the new cop went to tell the parents that the baby wasn’t going to make it, just as the veteran officer saved the baby).

It was pretty involved, not something you’d expect from Adam-12, a show that was produced in 1968. We really haven’t evolved TV as far as people think. I mean it’s 40 years later and this episode was in line with what you’d see on a modern show. The big thing that’s changed in the past 40 years is the hairstyles.

In other TV news, I’ve added a bunch of DVDs to my Amazon wishlist. Including classics like The Fall Guy and The A-Team. I love those old shows (look it’s 40 minutes into the show, time for B.A. to get out his welding torch). I love it when a plan comes together…

I figured I’d update my wishlist since my birthday is next week…

I keep watching my investments dwindle away. Like some people I blame Bush.

Given our uncertain economy, I’m hoping to retire with enough money to afford to afford coffee.

I’m starting a 401Koffee.

I’ve been using the free Celtx script writing program. It’s amazing, literally one of the two key factors that fell into place when I was trying to figure out this screenwriting thing (the other was Dave Trottier’s excellent book The Screenwritier’s Bible, but more on that later).

Celtx is great, I wrote several scripts with version 1.x – it’s a completely functional script publishing system. It’s the first specialized script writing program that I’ve used and I was very happy with it. Except for one quirk. When I highlight text and delete it, I’d often get a line of the script reformatted into some weird mode where I couldn’t move past the deleted section. It made edits maddeningly slow and I’d have to use the mouse to fix the problem.

I upgraded to the latest version and it had the same problem, so I decided to jump ship and get a professional program (and if you buy it you can get a free upgrade to the next version!). Luckily my birthday was coming up :)

Stupid weird things in FinalDraft:

• F3 doesn’t find the next occurrence of what I searched for previously.

• Double the size of Celtx PDFs.

• The spellchecker doesn’t like “pissed”, yet the profanity counter knows the word.

I had an ass-load of pain trying to get the scripts out of Celtx and into FinalDraft. I finally got it to work, mostly, but it was about six steps. First I exported the Celtx document to a text file. Then I opened the text file in an editor and munged the text. I loaded the munged file into FinalDraft, but basically no matter what I tried, I had to go and fix the script manually.

Ah, and MDI? Seriously? Didn’t that die with Windows 3.1?

I saw the two episodes of The Office last night. I wrote some similar plot lines, which you’d sort of expect since their script and mine followed the same character/story arc from the March 26th episode. I think mine is so much more funny that I think I’ll still enter it.

Plan B is to write a new episode of The Office, but the deadline is in a week or so. It’ll be pretty tight (that’s what she said). I’m away this weekend and will figure things out.

Oh. And woot! I got an email! (And I didn’t even know my contact form was working.)

A “regular reader” asked how I picked the three scripts that I wrote. My process wasn’t very scientific, I sort of stumbled into this.

If you draw a line from CSI to The Office, there is a group of shows in the middle that combine “police procedural” (term ganked from Kung Fu Monkey) and “zany humor”. That’s the sort of thing I like writing.

Straight up police procedural writing isn’t as exciting to me, I want humor – like Psych, which combines the “detectiving” with a quirky sense of humor.

Okay maybe it was a little scientific, but overall I should have thought things through a little more. My biggest piece of advice – don’t write an episode that fits into the existing timeline of a show.

I wrote an episode of The Office, figuring it was a good way to show my ability to write humor. I watched the last episode, two weeks ago and continued the storyline with Michael leaving to start his own paper company after fighting with the new VP.

Somehow I missed the name of the new VP, so I checked my favorite TV resource and they didn’t have the character’s name – just listed the actor. I googled and came up with an article that talked about the character.

Type, type. I put together an episode. It was quickly written, but I think it’s pretty solid – the right amount of humor, awkward situations, and the plotlines all come together nicely. I send it out to a couple friends to read and I get feedback.

“The Wire character is in The Office?” Wha? Oh, Idris Elba plays Stringer Bell in The Wire. That’s NOT the name of his character in The Office. Doh!

The sad thing is that it wasn’t a “search and replace” sort of fix. Kelly riffed on what her new name would be if she married the VP (Charles Minor, not Stringer Bell – how the heck did I forget that was his name – Michael made C-shaped bagels). Anyway, she goes on (and on and on) about her name being “Kelly Belly” or “Kell Bell” and Kevin makes a funny comment about it.

Bleh, I had to fix it. Mostly by cutting out a lot of the funny.

Then the big shock. I thought March 26th was the last episode of the season. There’s a new episode tonight. And it looks like the same story that I wrote, which hurts. Partially because I thought I was being original.

But also I wanted to submit the script in a contest. If my script is too similar to the one that airs, I’m going to shred it.

Maybe I’ll try to write another episode…